Best MBAs For I-Banking Jobs

CORNELL SKYROCKETS TO FOURTH AHEAD OF HARVARD AND NYU

Looking for some surprises? Start with Cornell University’s Johnson Graduate School of Management. It jumped 11 spots from the 2014 ranking to finish fourth. Here, 27.92% of graduates work in Tier 1 institutions (higher than Booth, NYU, Stanford, Tuck, and NYU) and another 12% holding front office positions in Tier 2 banks. And this could provide some real synergy for the one-year Cornell Tech MBA program in New York City, giving aspiring entrepreneurs and digital mavens a network of potentially friendly funders.

Imperial College Business School

Imperial College Business School

Cornell wasn’t the only program to make a big jump with efinancialcareers over the past two years. INSEAD (12th to 5th) and HEC Paris (26th to 8th) each made big moves, buoyed by respectable showings in the first tier that were bolstered by strong performances in the second tier. London’s Cass Business School climbed 11 spots to 14th, leapfrogging both Oxford and Cambridge. Most notably, Cass had the third-highest percentage of its graduate pool in Tier 1 banks (28.77%) – better than Wharton, LBS, and Cornell.

However, Cass’ rise pales in comparison to crosstown rival Imperial College Business School. Unranked in 2014, Imperial vaulted to 11th overall, with 26.05% of graduates in efinancialcareers’ resume base working in Tier 1 investment banks – double that of Manchester and Cranfield combined. For the 2015 Class, the school lists Barclays, Deutsche Bank, and Morgan Stanley among its top recruiters. Spain’s IE Business School – known for its entrepreneurial leadership – has also emerged as a banking mecca, rising from 33rd to 18th – with nearly the same percentage of Tier 1 front office staffers (22.32%) as INSEAD (23.92%) and IESE (23.23%).

YALE TUMBLES FROM 3RD TO 10TH

However, the news wasn’t positive for a number of schools. Most notably, Yale (-7), MIT Sloan (-6), Chicago (-6), Cambridge Judge (-10), Northwestern Kellogg (-12), and Rice Jones (-15) all tumbled in the past two years. Yale, in particular, experienced the worst. Once ranked above Harvard and LBS at 3rd in 2014, Yale fell to 10th overall, though it still posts respectable numbers in the first tier (27.22%). That said, the total percentage of its graduates’ resumes being in front offices of banks in the top three tiers (39.77%) was actually lower than all but one school ranked in efinancialcareers’ top 20.

Sloan, Booth, and Judge each slipped out of the top 10. Along with Imperial Business School, the University of Hong Kong (30th) and the University of California-Berkeley’s Haas School of Business (33rd) also joined efinancialcareers’ rankings in 2016.

Overall, the London Business had the highest percent of school CVs in the top three tiers at 46.08%. LBS was followed by INSEAD (45.34%), IE Business School (44.93%), and Wharton (44.83%). Among top 15 American MBA programs, only Virginia Darden, Michigan Ross, and UCLA Anderson missed efinancialcareers’ cut.

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